Migrant students' self-reported executive function skills in relation to mental health, postmigration stress, and positive appraisals of self and the social context.

Refugee and non-refugee migrant youths may carry a double burden of past adversities and post-migration stress while trying to continue schooling and adapt to their new social and cultural environment. Executive functioning skills are central to learning and navigating in the new context. Knowledge of how young migrants' executive functioning is associated with stressful factors and positive or potentially protective factors, could contribute to understanding and possibly finding ways to support these young learners.

Psychometric properties of the Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES-8) among refugee adolescents from Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia.

High levels of post-traumatic stress are well documented among refugees. Yet, refugee adolescents display high heterogeneity in their type of trauma and symptom levels. Following the recurrent plea for validated trauma screening tools, this study investigated the psychometric properties of the Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES-8) among refugee adolescents from Afghanistan ( = 148), Syria ( = 234), and Somalia ( = 175) living in Europe.

Silencing or silent transmission? An exploratory study on trauma communication in Kurdish refugee families.

Trauma communication in refugee families is increasingly recognized as an important relational dynamic influencing psychosocial well-being, yet studies exploring interactional dynamics and meaning making at play in intra-family trauma communication remain scarce. This article reports on a qualitative study with Kurdish refugee families including parents (N = 10) and children (N = 17) resettled in Belgium, aiming to explore practices on trauma communication within refugee family relationships. In a multiple-phased qualitative design, semi-structured family interviews and participant observation administered in the homes of the participant families are followed by parental interviews involving a tape-assisted recall procedure to investigate observed intergenerational trauma communication and parent-child interactions.

Developing a Collaborative Approach to Support Access and Acceptability of Mental Health Care for Refugee Youth: An Exploratory Case Study with Young Afghan Refugees.

Despite an increased prevalence of psychiatric morbidity, minor refugees resettled in Western host societies are less likely to access mental health care services than their native peers. This study aims to explore how a collaborative approach can be implemented to promote access to specialized mental health care. Collaborative mental health care embeds specialized intervention in primary care settings and emphasizes the inclusion of minority cultural perspectives through an interdisciplinary, intersectoral network.

Understanding how classroom drama workshops can facilitate social capital for newly arrived migrant and refugee adolescents: Insights from Denmark.

Art-based interventions, such as classroom drama workshops (CDWs), increasingly form part of a collection of mental health-promoting activities introduced in school settings. While research points to the potential benefits of CDWs for the mental well-being of refugee and migrant adolescents, the mechanisms to such improvement are less understood. In this article we respond to the need for qualitative evidence of how CDW interventions affect refugee and migrant adolescents' experience.

"It will always be ": A qualitative study of Syrian young adults expressing histories of collective violence and forced displacement in participatory theatre.

Given the increased prevalence of mental health problems in Syrian refugee communities, there have been efforts to develop adequate mental health care for their well-being. Herein, clinical literature is increasingly emphasizing the importance of locating refugees' healing at the nexus of personal and social realities, understanding the process of trauma narration within social restorative spaces of witnessing and communal support. Alongside this debate, there is growing interest in the relevance of participatory theatre for refugees.

The role of school-based creative expression interventions in the aftermath of migration: A qualitative exploration of parents' and teachers' perspectives.

This study explored supportive relational processes for immigrant children's well-being between peers, teachers, and parents in the development of school-based creative interventions in European multi-ethnic societies. Within the present study, we integrated the perspectives of teachers and parents to broaden the dominant focus on the assessment of individual symptomatology within the existing body of studies of school-based interventions studies. As a part of a larger multi-method study on the implementation of a creative expression program for immigrant children ages 8-12 years in three schools in Belgium, we conducted focus group discussions to learn parents' and teachers' perspectives on the role of school-based creative interventions in children's coping with histories of migration and life in exile.

School-based Psychosocial Interventions' Effectiveness in Strengthening Refugee and Migrant Adolescents' Mental Health, Resilience, and Social Relations: A Four-country Cluster Randomized Study.

School-based psychosocial interventions are increasingly put forward as a way to support young refugees' and migrants' well-being and mental health in resettlement. However, the evidence on these interventions' effectiveness remains scarce and scholars denounce particular gaps in the evidence to date, pointing to a lack of large-scale, controlled studies and studies including social outcome measures. This cluster randomized study aims to strengthen the evidence base on school-based psychosocial interventions for refugee and migrant youth by assessing the effect of two interventions, Classroom Drama and Welcome to School, on youth's mental health, resilience, and social relations in Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and the United Kingdom.

The effect of a school-based creative expression program on immigrant and refugee children's mental health and classroom social relationships: A cluster randomized trial in elementary school.

This study evaluated the effects of a school-based creative expression program on mental health and classroom social relationships in elementary school children with refugee and nonrefugee migration backgrounds. It was hypothesized that children receiving the intervention would report less externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors, less posttraumatic functioning, and more positive classroom social relationships at posttest than children receiving education as usual, particularly for refugee children. Classes in three multiethnic Belgian elementary schools were randomly assigned to a creative intervention (7 classes, 68 students) or control condition (6 classes, 52 students).

Mental health problems in refugee and immigrant primary school children in Flanders, Belgium.

Background: European countries face the challenge of promoting refugee and immigrant children's well-being within their host communities, invoking the necessity of adequate mental health assessment. This study aims to contribute to document the psychosocial well-being of primary school refugee and non-refugee immigrant children in Flanders, Belgium.

Method: A total of 120 children (8-12 years old) with migration backgrounds participated in the study.

Working With the Encounter: A Descriptive Account and Case Analysis of School-Based Collaborative Mental Health Care for Refugee Children in Leuven, Belgium.

Scholars increasingly point toward schools as meaningful contexts in which to provide psychosocial care for refugee children. Collaborative mental health care in school forms a particular practice of school-based mental health care provision. Developed in Canada and inspired by systemic intervention approaches, collaborative mental health care in schools involves the formation of an interdisciplinary care network, in which mental health care providers and school partners collaborate with each other and the refugee family in a joint assessment of child development and mental health, as well as joint intervention planning and provision.

Mental Health of Refugee and Non-refugee Migrant Young People in European Secondary Education: The Role of Family Separation, Daily Material Stress and Perceived Discrimination in Resettlement.

While scholarly literature indicates that both refugee and non-refugee migrant young people display increased levels of psychosocial vulnerability, studies comparing the mental health of the two groups remain scarce. This study aims to further the existing evidence by examining refugee and non-refugee migrants' mental health, in relation to their migration history and resettlement conditions. The mental health of 883 refugee and 483 non-refugee migrants (mean age 15.

A contextualized perspective on research participation in collaborative refugee research: A multi-site exploration of relational dynamics in collaborative research.

Objective: An increasing body of literature emphasizes the role of refugees' social context, with social conditions both at home and in the host society having an impact on the possibility of power redistribution and the mobilization of agency in collaborative research practices. Our aim is to develop a contextualized understanding of research participation for refugees in collaborative research in order to further enhance insights on the potential strengths and pitfalls of collaborative refugee research.

Method: We closely study the various relational contexts that shape refugees' research participation and that may have an influence on power dynamics in collaborative research.

"The mother I was born to or the one I worked for?": An exploratory study on family separation in live-in child domestic workers in Karnataka, India.

Background: Live-in child domestic work is a mostly exploitative informal labour sector that involves child migration and long-term, most often forced separation from family and extended family network. This is the first empirical exploration of children's lived experiences of ongoing family-child separation in the context of child domestic work.

Objective: While numerous studies conducted on childhood, child development and child health in the context of child labour argue that family separation is detrimental to children's psychosocial health, little is known about how this separation is understood by children living through ongoing separation while being employed in child domestic work.

"I Look at You and See You Looking at Me": Role Boundaries in a Dynamic Research Relationship in Qualitative Health Research With Refugees.

In institutional ethical and deontological guidelines, there is a prevailing, static understanding of the research partnership, with a clear boundary between researcher and participant. In this article, we argue that such a static understanding may run the risk of impeding the development of an enhanced contextual and dynamic intersubjective understanding of the research partnership and its impact on the growing importance of role boundaries in qualitative research. Drawing from a refugee health study on trauma and forced migration, we explore the different ways in which participants and the researcher engaged with the researcher's multiple positions and role boundaries.

Psychosocial and community assessment of relatives of victims of extra-judicial killings in Peru: Informing international courts.

Introduction: During the Peruvian internal armed conflict, fifteen members of the Santa Barbara community were collectively executed by state agents, and their relatives were made victims of persecution, torture, and imprisonment. The case, known as the Santa Barbara massacre, was brought to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The documentation of individual, family and community impacts for the Court became a challenge due to the need to address cultural, geographical, political and community aspects.

Ambiguous Loss in Transnational Families' Adolescents: An Exploratory Study in Ecuador.

In psychosocial migration literature, the perspective of ambiguous loss has been relevant to articulate personal and relational experiences in the context of transnational families and ongoing separation. Most studies have focused on adult members' experiences of transnational families, but research exploring ambiguous loss in adolescents whose parents have migrated is still lacking. The present study aimed to explore adolescents' lived experiences of parental migration.

Stories of trauma in family therapy with refugees: Supporting safe relational spaces of narration and silence.

With the sharp increase of refugees' arrival and resettlement in western communities, adequate mental health care forms a pivotal dimension in host societies' responses to those individuals and communities seeking protection within their borders. Here, clinical literature shows a growing interest in the development of family therapy approaches with refugees, in which therapeutic practice engages with the pivotal role of refugee family dynamics in posttrauma reconstruction and adaptation in resettlement and aims at supporting posttrauma reconstruction through strengthening capacities to restore safety, meaning and connectedness within family relationships. In this article, we focus on the narrative restoration of meaning as central mode of posttrauma reparation and explore its specific dynamics and relational complexities in the context of therapeutic practice with refugee families.

Unraveling the Mobilization of Memory in Research With Refugees.

In this article, we explore how narrative accounts of trauma are co-constructed through the interaction between researcher and participant. Using a narrative multiple-case study with Kurdish refugee families, we address how this process takes place, investigating how researcher and participants were engaged in relational, moral, collective, and sociopolitical dimensions of remembering, and how this led to the emergence of particular ethical questions. Case examples indicate that acknowledging the multilayered co-construction of remembering in the research relationship profoundly complicates existing deontological guidelines that predominantly emphasize the researcher's responsibility in sensitively dealing with participants' alleged autobiographical trauma narratives.

Remembering Collective Violence: Broadening the Notion of Traumatic Memory in Post-Conflict Rehabilitation.

In the aftermath of war and armed conflict, individuals and communities face the challenge of dealing with recollections of violence and atrocity. This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of processes of remembering and forgetting histories of violence in post-conflict communities and to reflect on related implications for trauma rehabilitation in post-conflict settings. Starting from the observation that memory operates at the core of PTSD symptomatology, we more closely explore how this notion of traumatic memory is conceptualized within PTSD-centered research and interventions.

Attachment narratives in refugee children: interrater reliability and qualitative analysis in pilot findings from a two-site study.

Although forced migration research on refugee family functioning clearly points to the potential breakdown of parental availability and responsiveness in the context of cumulative migration stressors, studies exploring attachment security in refugee children are surprisingly lacking so far. The authors report their findings from a 2-site, small-scale administration of an attachment measure, adapted for use with refugee children aged between 4 and 9 years from a reliable and validated doll-play procedure. We evaluated interrater reliability and conducted a qualitative analysis of refugee children's narrative response to identify migration-specific representational markers of attachment quality.

Voices of dialogue and directivity in family therapy with refugees: evolving ideas about dialogical refugee care.

In this article, we reflect on our evolving ideas regarding a dialogical approach to refugee care. Broadening the predominant phased trauma care model and its engaging of directive expertise in symptom reduction, meaning making, and rebuilding connectedness, these developing dialogical notions involve the negotiation of silencing and disclosure, meaning and absurdity, hope and hopelessness in a therapeutic dialogue that accepts its encounter of cultural and social difference. In locating therapeutic practice within these divergent approaches, we argue an orientation on collaborative dialogue may operate together with notions from the phased trauma care model as heuristic background in engaging a polyphonic understanding of coping with individual and family sequelae of forced displacement.

Holding harm: narrative methods in mental health research on refugee trauma.

In this article, we question narrative inquiry's predominant ethics of benefit when engaging in narrative research on trauma and social suffering. Through a particular focus on the use of a narrative methodology in a refugee health study, we explore the potential risk and protective function of narrative trauma research with vulnerable respondents. A review of ethical questions emerging during the course of a multiple-case study with refugee families documents how narrative methods' characteristics clearly revisit the impact of traumatization on autonomy, narrativity, and relationship building in participants and, thus, evoke the replay of traumatic experience within the research relationship itself.

Adult attachment in the context of refugee traumatisation: the impact of organized violence and forced separation on parental states of mind regarding attachment.

Starting from an outline of the refugee experience as a process of cumulative traumatisation, we review research literature on mental health outcomes in refugees. Next, an integration of findings on relational processes in refugee families documents the role of the family unit as a key interactive context patterning the impact of sequential traumatisation. Relating these trauma- and migration-specific family processes to their central dimension of provision or disruption of emotional availability in a context of chronic adversity, we aim to explore the development of unresolved and insecure parental states of mind regarding attachment during forced migration.